Friendship
Heart must understand heart; heart must be drawn to heart, if friendship must last. Friendship must bind two hearts and affect both of them beneficially, whatever may happen to loss or gain, pain or pleasure, good fortune or bad. The bond must survive all the blows of fate and be unaffected by time, place, and circumstances. Each must correct the other; and each must welcome criticism and comment from the other; for each knows that they come from sympathy and love. Each must be vigilant that the other does not slide from the ideal, cultivate habits that are deleterious or hide thoughts and plans that are productive or evil. The honor of each is in the safe keeping of the other. Each trusts the other and places reliance on the other’s watchful love. Only those deserve the name friends who help in uplifting life, cleansing ideals, elevating emotions, and strengthening resolves.
Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 8, p. 210
Sneha is usually translated as friendship, but that word has been vulgarized by application to a number of transitory friendships between living beings…. Friendship ought to be a spiritual bond, a heart-to-heart kinship, based on full understanding of each other, and pure dedication, one to the other…. Genuine friendship can only be between an atma (God within) and another, that is to say, between persons who have realized that the atma is the core of their being. Arjuna and Krishna had this genuine sneha. Arjuna says in the Gita that he considered Krishna as his sakha or friend and had the temerity to use words of jesting irreverence during play, or while reposing, or when seated at meals. They ate meals from the same plate; very often Arjuna rested with his head on Krishna’s lap or Krishna rested keeping His head on the lap of Arjuna. They helped each other in all circumstances and spoke soft and sweet [words] to each other.
Sanathana Sarathi, Sept. 1978
Arjuna prayed that Krishna become evident to him as a friend and comrade rather than as the immanent director, the transcendent sovereign, the innate substance of all that is, was, and will be! He longed for the joy of kinship rather than the bliss of mergence. To conceive of the divine as the inner core and the outer shell of every atom and plant, every speck of dust, and every system of nebulae, as well as oneself is an exercise that overwhelms individuality; and so Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and others have prayed for the role of adorer, rather than the abolition of roles!
Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 8, p. 184
